Idealab's VC arm assumes new identity

The venture capital firm sheds the name of the struggling incubator to take on the financing world as Clearstone Venture Partners.

3 January 200211:43 am AEDT

The venture capital arm of struggling incubator Idealab wants to take on the financing world under a new name.

The $450 million firm, Idealab Capital Partners, has changed its name to Clearstone Venture Partners and has made recent investments in wireless software company Neomar, wireless optical-networking company Zyoptics and enterprise applications provider SummitLogic, the company said in a statement.

Financial details of the investments were not disclosed.

The company also opened a new office at Silicon Valley's venture capital ground zero, Sand Hill Road, and plans to move its Southern California office to Los Angeles' Westside.

Clearstone is the independent venture capital arm of Idealab, which helped launch such Internet notables as eToys, FreePC and Ticketmaster. Like many of its early investments, however, Idealab has felt the heat go out of the Internet bonfire and has seen its portfolio go stone cold. In March, the company said it was shutting its offices in Silicon Valley.

Industry observers say Idealab's venture arm is looking to distance itself from the failures of its parent company by changing its name.

Leonid Kazovsky has joined Clearstone as a venture partner and will sit on its technical advisory board, while helping with investments and working with portfolio companies. Kazovsky is a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and head of the Optical Communication Research Laboratory there.